CI/CD: Software That’s Always Ready for Production

Continuous integration and continuous delivery use automation to ensure that new application code is always tested, secure, and ready for deployment so teams can ship to production when the time is right.

Continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) are essential for any organization that seeks to rapidly deliver software. These methods are the natural evolution of agile development. At the core of these practices: your software should always be in a deployable state.

What’s the Value of CI/CD? A Team That Can’t Ship Can’t Learn

A Pivotal Perspective by Matthew Kane Parker, Head of Engineering, Pivotal Labs

There are two questions you have to ask when considering shipping software: Should we ship? And can we ship? The answer to the former is ultimately a business decision. But the latter is fundamentally an engineering decision. With CI/CD, the goal is to always — ALWAYS — have a “yes” answer to this question.

Your build pipeline, sometimes called your continuous integration/continuous delivery pipeline, is the connection between a developer commiting code and adding new functionality to applications in production. It’s also one of your most important software delivery assets.